Speaking during a Sunday, December 29 roundtable on “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan, CBS News reporter and chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford commented on how President Joe Biden’s cognitive health issues were unaddressed and underreported on in 2024, something that probably changed the outcome of the election and caused issues for the Democrats. Predictably that sparked a spat as liberals on the panel rushed in to defend the president.
Crawford, in her comments on how the corporate media largely dodged the issue of the “obvious” declining mental acuity of the elderly president, noted that the media hadn’t done its job, which was to cover the White House and its senior occupant. As evidence, she pointed to the Trump-Biden debate that saw Biden struggle to give coherent answers to even basic questions, prompting a huge outcry in concern over his mental sharpness.
Major Garrett, a top Washington correspondent for CBS News, broached the question of what something underreported from 2024 in a major way was. Doing so, he asked Crawford, “One of the things we also do in the year-end correspondents roundtable is dig into what was undercovered or underreported. Jan?”
Crawford told him, pointing to the presidential debate, “Undercovered and underreported, that would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in the televised debate.” Garrett, clarifying, said, “At the presidential debate with Donald Trump.” Crawford told him, “Unquestioned,” meaning Biden’s brain issues.
Elaborating, Crawford noted that new reports are, in the final days of the Biden Administration, finally noting that the White House worked to hide Biden’s issues. She said, “And it’s starting to emerge now that his advisers kind of managed his limitations, which has been reported in “The Wall Street Journal,” for four years.”
Continuing, she noted that Biden even tried running again for president despite having to have a staff to manage his problems. She said, “And yet he insisted that he could still run for president. We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for another four years, which could have led to a primary for the Democrats.”
Building on that, Crawford noted that honest reporting on what was going on inside the White House could have changed the whole election. She said, “It could have changed the scope of the entire election.” Still not done, she noted that Biden is still saying he could have beaten Trump. “Yet still, incredibly, we read in “The Washington Post” that his advisers are saying that he regrets that he dropped out of the race, that he thinks he could have beaten Trump,” Crawford said.
Emphasizing just how problematic the media’s failure was in this case, and what she sees Biden’s braggadocio about being able to win as representing, Crawford then noted, “And I think that is either delusional or they’re gaslighting the American people.” As could be expected, those comments got an even more liberal co-panelist of hers hopping mad.
That was CBS News political reporter Robert Costa, who snapped that Biden’s issues in the debate came from a problem with a cold, not cognitive health issues. He said, snapping at Crawford, “President Biden has said repeatedly he was sick during the debate June 27 in Atlanta and he’s always been fine and he leaves fine. That is his position, the position of many of his top aides as well, even though there is that reporting.”
There was then a bit of crosstalk as they bickered about it. Watch that here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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